China has unveiled a sweeping revamp of its government bureaucracies, breaking up traditional power structures as President Xi Jinping attempts to fuse the ruling Communist party into the day-to-day operations of the state.
Among the biggest changes is the creation of a National Supervision Commission that combines party discipline and state judicial functions, reversing a division of labour that has been in place for decades.
The revamp also includes the merging of its banking and insurance regulators in an effort to plug regulatory loopholes that have enabled shadow bank activity, the latest move in Beijing’s “regulatory windstorm” against financial risk.